


Limbo (Part 2)

by thewriterpoe



Category: EXO (Band), SHINee
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriterpoe/pseuds/thewriterpoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Limbo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo (Part 2)

Taemin woke up with a smile. It was the first time in a long time that he’d had a good night’s sleep; the first time since he came home and found Jongin packing his things. Something inside Taemin broke that night.

With sleep still gumming his eyes shut, he let his hands ran over the warm body next to him; his fingers etching the curve of muscle underneath bare abdominal skin, tripping down a thick bunny trail, but stopping just at the elastic band sitting low on jutted hips.

His eyes cracked open and he offered to sheepish smile to Jongin’s stern stare. “Morning,” he greeted.

Jongin gently pushed Taemin’s hand off him as he sat up with his back to Taemin.

“So what do you want for breakfast?” Taemin asked. He reached to run his hand down Jongin’s spine but reconsidered.

Jongin looked over his shoulder, a sleepy smirk plastered on his face. Even first thing in the morning, he looked so goddamned adorable. “ _You’re_ going to cook?”

“I CAN cook,” Taemin returned defensively.

Jongin laughed remembering the time Taemin tried to convince him that the burnt parts of the pancakes he’d made were a result of the wheat flour he mixed in with regular flour. “I wouldn’t call what you do cooking.”

“Whatever,” Taemin sulked, running his hands through his hair. He shut his eyes again. From the reckless sway of Jongin’s head, he too was losing the battle against sleep. “Anyway, I didn’t say anything about cooking. We could order in.”

Jongin made a non-committal noise before the obnoxious tone of his cell phone startled him.

“Oh, Sehun-ah...yes I’m coming…no I’m not at home…where am I?” he hesitated before he said he was with a friend.

Taemin flinched. _Why wouldn’t he tell Sehun he was here with him?_

Taemin and Jongin were at an awkward phase in their relationship. Even though they were broken up, they had found it hard to stay away from each other. Other than each other, they didn’t really have many friends and the friends they had were friends in common. It was Jongin who suggested that they try just being friends like they were before they started dating. Taemin hated the idea because even back then they weren’t _just_ friends. Maybe in the beginning when they were twelve but the years leading up to his confession were filled with so much tension that when he finally confessed it felt like breathing. Still, he agreed to the arrangement because he honestly thought they’d eventually get back to dating. But it had been three months and Jongin was pretty adamant on keeping things strictly friendly.  Last night was the first time Jongin slept over since moving out.

When Jongin hang up with Sehun, he went in search for his clothes. He deliberately avoided Taemin’s gaze when he asked for a rain check on breakfast.

Fully clothed, he hesitated by the bedroom door. “I’m sorry for drinking too much and passing out in your bed last night.”

 _Our bed,_ Taemin thought. He considered telling Jongin that he had gotten him drunk on purpose but the look on his face was sincere.

“You’re still coming to the party, right?”

“Yeah,” Jongin replied with a small smile. Taemin knew why he was nervous about the party. Jonghyun would be there and even though Jongin and Jonghyun were friendly with each other, Jonghyun would always be a sour spot for Jongin.

 

*

 

Taemin was trying to concentrate on what Kibum was saying, but his eyes kept flitting about the room. He hadn’t seen Jongin in a while and Jonghyun was hovering awkwardly in his periphery talking to Jinki and Minho.

“He’s behind you,” Kibum intoned dryly when it was evident that Taemin wasn’t paying attention to him.

Taemin pretended not to know what Kibum was talking about but he was already turning around. _Damn Kibum and his shrewd eyes_. Jongin was laughing with Sehun. _What was so damn funny that Jongin was falling over himself, snorting?_ Sehun wasn’t a funny guy, not intentionally. _And why was Jongin not doing anything about Sehun’s hand on his waist?_

If Taemin was asked, he would deny that he was jealous but that’s what he was…jealous. He was jealous of the ease of interaction Jongin had with people that weren’t him. There was even that time they went to a club and Jongin spent half the night grinding against some foreign girl but second guessed holding Taemin’s arm so that they couldn’t get separated as the navigated the overcrowded dance floor. They were not easygoing – his interactions with Jongin. There was always hesitation where before there was none.

“Go to him,” Kibum said, calling Taemin’s attention to him again.

Taemin shook his head slightly, urging Kibum to continue his story. When he looked back to where Jongin and Sehun were, the space is empty. He looked around the semi-dark, crowded apartment but he couldn’t spot bubble gum colored hair anywhere.

 _Fuck!_ He cussed internally. He was pretty sure that Jongin had left the party but Kibum was still talking and it would have been rude to leave in the middle of the story.

Taemin caught up to Jongin three blocks away from the party. After yelling his name four times, Jongin finally heard and turned back, looking surprised. Taemin didn’t say anything for a while. He was bent over catching his breath.

“Did you run all the way here?” Jongin asked.

Taemin glared up at him, still too breathless to say anything.

“Why?”

“Why?” Taemin gasped. “We came together and you just left.”

Jongin looked embarrassed. “I didn’t want it to be weird for you. I know you weren’t talking to Jonghyun for my sake but you don’t have to do that. You should go back.”

Taemin stood up straight, looking at Jongin with a wounded expression. “You’ve been doing that a lot,” he said.

“What?"

“Sending me away. First with Minho’s soccer match even though we had planned our movie night and now tonight. It’s almost as though you don’t want to be around me.”

Jongin looked panicked as he explained, again, that he didn’t want things to be weird between Taemin and Jonghyun. “I want you and Jonghyun to be okay.”

Taemin sighed. “Jonghyun and I will be fine. It’s only weird between him and I because it’s weird between you and I. He blames himself but he doesn’t know what to do.”

“But it’s not weird between us,” Jongin noted, gesturing between them.

Taemin looked at Jongin for any hint of sarcasm because he couldn’t believe that Jongin was serious. It was weird as fuck…pretending to be something less than what they were. But Taemin didn’t want to fight.

“We still haven’t finished watching The Exorcist,” Taemin changed the subject.

Jongin groaned. He had hoped that Taemin had forgotten about it. He hated horror films and only watched them because he made Taemin watch foreign films with him.

“I watched that boring ass French film last time,” Taemin insisted, countering the protest already forming in Jongin’s mind.

“Fine,” Jongin acquiesced, sulking. “But I get to fall asleep half way through.”

Taemin smirked knowing that there was no way Jongin would be able to sleep through the movie.

 

*

 

It was like old times; Taemin laughing at Jongin as he watched the movie through his fingers, Jongin punching Taemin’s thigh when he scared him for the second time.

“You’re such as ass,” Jongin grumbled, getting up to go to the bathroom.

Taemin rushed to grab his hand. “Where are you going?” There was a hint of panic in his voice and he was glad the room was dark because the panic was clear across his face.

“I need to pee,” Jongin answered, suspicious that Taemin might be planning on scaring him again. When he came out, he looked to make sure that Taemin wasn’t hiding around a corner. He wasn’t. He was still on the couch, his eyes trained on the bathroom door.

“You know I’m going to have to watch a bunch Disney movies till I’m able to fall asleep, right?” Jongin complained.

Taemin broke into a smile that was half relief, half mischief. He watched Jongin come around and take his place on his side of the couch.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Taemin chided him.

“Says the one who cries every time we watch the Lion King,” Jongin returned.

Taemin stuck his tongue out at Jongin and hit the play back button.

By the time the movie ended, Jongin’s scowl had deepened considerably. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.  And Taemin had to nerve to say, in his most cheery voice, that the movie wasn’t so bad.

“Speak for yourself,” Jongin grumbled.

“Remember the scene with the girl coming down the stairs -?”

“La la la la la,” Jongin yelled, plugging his ears.

Taemin doubled over laughing. It abruptly stopped when Jongin announced that it was about time he got going.

“But don’t you have to watch your Disney movies? I’ll even let you watch the Lion King,” Taemin offered. It sounded desperate because he was.

It had been such a nice night and Jongin wished it didn’t have to end but he didn’t trust himself around Taemin. If anything had happened the night before he could have at least played it off as drunken escapade. He was very much sober this night.

“Can’t you just stay the night?” Taemin pleaded. “You stayed last night and it was fine.” He had Jongin’s hand in his and Jongin wasn’t moving away.

“It wasn’t fine,” Jongin returned immediately. “And don’t think I didn’t know what you were doing getting me drunk.”

Taemin smiled cheekily for a moment then was serious again. “It’s just that every time you leave it feels like that night…the night you left.”

“You’re not being fair,” Jongin complained quietly. He could feel his resolve weakening; much like ‘that night’ when he saw Taemin cry for the first time.

“I thought I’d lost you forever…”

“Taemin, stop,” Jongin interrupted him, twisting his hand out of Taemin’s grasp.

“Stop what?” Taemin snapped. It was all bullshit and he was tired of it. “Can you honestly tell me you don’t miss…us?”

“So this is about fucking?”

Taemin growled but his eyes were shining with tears. “Of course not, but I gotta be honest. I’ve had all of you. I don’t think I can go back to just having some of you.”

Jongin’s eyes were blazing. He couldn’t believe how selfish Taemin was being. “So you’re saying it’s fucking or nothing at all.”

Taemin took a deep breath in and held Jongin’s hand again. “I’m saying if you can tell me that you don’t miss us then I’ll never bring it up again.”

Jongin looked at where their skin touched so he didn’t have to look in Taemin’s eyes. Of course he missed ‘us’: the way Taemin dumped his body on him when he wanted sex,  the way Taemin mewled when he ran his tongue on the seam of Taemin’s pelvis, the way Taemin smelled when he was cumming. But Taemin hurt him.

“Jonginnie, I’m sorry,” Taemin said as though he could read Jongin’s mind. “A thousand times over, I’m sorry. And I will spend the rest of our lives making it up to you. Just please…”

Something wet dropped on the hand Taemin was holding and Jongin realized that the tear was his when his vision became cloudy. Taemin was on him immediately, enveloping him in a hug that dissolved what, if any, resolve Jongin had left. He needed that hug. Ever since the night he caught Taemin and Jonghyun together, he needed Taemin to hold him and console him because Taemin was always the one to hold and console him when life got rough. That was what hurt the most – that he couldn’t turn to the one person he needed because that was the person who hurt him.

Taemin had held Jongin before but not like this, not as the one who caused the pain; and he felt like he was intruding on something intimate.  Clinging to Jongin’s shaking body, he listened to Jongin’s erratic breathing as he tried to stop the outpouring of tears. It seemed that the harder he tried to stop, the more it poured. He pat Jongin’s back as if to say ‘let it all out.’

Ten minutes later, numb and awkward from holding Jongin up, he realized that the other had fallen asleep. He couldn’t help but chuckle as he twisted his neck to look at Jongin’s face. Only Jongin. He managed to get them both on the couch, still holding on to Jongin. Five minutes later, Jongin opened his eyes, refreshed then embarrassed.

“I cried a lot, huh?”

Taemin smiled like he was about to tease him but he didn’t. He kissed Jongin instead.

“Do you mind if I stay the night?” Jongin asked.

Taemin smiled, tucking a lock of hair behind Jongin’s ear. _Tonight and every night._

 

*

 

Taemin woke up with a smile. With sleep still gumming his eyes shut, he let his hands ran over the warm body next to him, fingers etching the curve of muscle underneath bare abdominal skin, tripping down a think bunny trail and sneaking underneath the elastic band sitting low on jutted hips.

“Good morning,” he whispered to no one or maybe to Jongin’s dick firm against his palm.


End file.
